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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256184">The Flight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett'>SegaBarrett</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Euphoria (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Comfort, Drugs - Relapse, Drugs - Withdrawal, F/F, Passing mention of vomiting, Treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:40:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256184</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rue felt like she was flying.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rue Bennett/Lexi Howard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Darkest Night 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Flight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/theharleyquinn/gifts">theharleyquinn</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: I don't own Euphoria, and I make no money from this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rue was flying.</p><p>Her legs were kicking up, then folding in on themselves, then bringing her back down to Earth. She was falling into the floor and she felt as if she had been wrapped in a blanket and was never going to be let go again. </p><p>Somewhere, she was probably screaming, or maybe that was only deep inside herself. Everything was right (and yet, that feeling over her shoulder and around her, eyes peeking at her bedside) everything was very, very wrong.</p><p>But in spite of it all, Rue was flying, and there wasn’t a whole lot of time to really think about things while one is flying.</p><p>She didn’t expect to run into Lexi. The perk of flying was usually that you were the only one up there, unless you ended up in the way of a wayward plane or maybe a series of migrating geese. But, no, there was Lexi – watching her and looking at her with the kind of glance that Rue couldn’t stand and also couldn’t shake.</p><p>She was looking at her with disappointment. </p><p>Rue wasn’t sure she could survive if someone else looked at her with disappointment.</p><p>***</p><p>Rue’s eyes opened, ever so slowly. Everything hurt, and her head felt as if it was underwater and she couldn’t push up far enough to catch a breath. </p><p>“You’re awake.”</p><p>The sound was distant all over again – airy and floating, far away, sliding through a fog. But the voice was familiar. The voice was one that she could never forget.</p><p>“Lexi,” Rue whispered. “Why are you here?”</p><p>“Because you were passed out asleep on my lawn?”</p><p>“No I wasn’t,” Rue replied, rolling over on her side and rubbing her head against the… couch? Was it a couch or a bed she had found herself swaddled in?</p><p>“Yes, you were,” Lexi said firmly. “And anyone could have come by and, I don’t know, kidnapped you or something. But instead it was just me. I was the one who kidnapped you.”</p><p>Rue tried to laugh, but it got caught in her throat and came out as a hacking cough instead. </p><p>“What were you doing?”</p><p>Rue rolled over and curled into a fetal position.</p><p>“You know what I was doin’, Lexi. Now just let me sleep. You’re getting in the way of me bein’ able to fly.”</p><p>“Rue, come on. This isn’t okay. You need to stop.”</p><p>“What do I need to stop? Why do you even care?” Rue climbed under the pillow she had been laying on, deciding that maybe if Lexi couldn’t see her, she couldn’t keep talking to her about this stuff either. “You left me.”</p><p>“I didn’t leave you,” Lexi whispered. “I never left you, Rue. I never wanted to – maybe we were too different but… Goddamnit Rue, stop hiding!” She reached forward and tried to grab the pillow, but Rue held fast and tried to wrench it back. She needed it, needed the protection, needed to not be here in the first place.</p><p>“No,” Rue replied, and it felt as if they were six or seven again, playing games in Lexi’s house and allowing themselves to be trapped in a million fairy tales in which one could hide away in a tree trunk or the back of a carriage or below deck in a pirate ship. </p><p>It was lonely not to have the entire world be possible anymore, and Rue mused that she would never get that feeling back again. But she could fly – she could always fly, if she was willing to let a few other things slip through her fingers to achieve it.</p><p>She rolled to the side, groaning. </p><p>Everything was bad. Nothing was good.</p><p>***</p><p>The next few days were all in a blur, and that blur consisted largely of Lexi tending to her – it was hard to tell, all feathery touches along her brow and replacing her blanket when she got cold, the same one she threw off in a rage when everything got too hot.</p><p>It was hard to focus, most of the time, but Rue thought that maybe that was for the best.</p><p>Whatever hell she was running into, that might be for the best too. She had become used to it, used to hovering between, used to… where was she? Not in some place that was dangerous – that much she could tell. There was a safety around her, but she couldn’t quite remember why.</p><p>“No one’s giving us grief about it,” Lexi told her, and Rue couldn’t figure out what there was to be given grief about, even though she seemed to keep crawling across the floor to throw up in Lexi’s bathroom. Her mind couldn’t compute all of it; maybe she had broken it for good, this time.</p><p>That would be for the best.</p><p>Rue wondered if anyone else was going to come look for her, or maybe if everyone had just given up on her and let her go. Except for Lexi, of course.</p><p>Rue wondered how screwed she would have been if some serial killer had found her instead of Lexi. Or if Lexi decided she should become a serial killer. Rue wondered if that was an option on those career quizzes.</p><p>Everything was exploded in her brain, drained in her heart and all through her body. She needed to never do this again. But she had promised herself that the last “last time”, and the time before that, too.</p><p>“Lexi,” she whispered. Her throat was dry. She told herself that she would never, never do this again. She was done with drugs for good – whatever it took to walk the line, she would do it, because it was all too much. It was getting to be too much.</p><p>Damn it, she was far too young to decide that she was too old for this shit.</p><p>Lexi had been sitting by her bed… couch? She had been sitting by her couch-side, a phrase so odd that it would have sent Rue into hysterics if everything wasn’t aching beyond belief.  </p><p>“Uh huh?” Lexi inquired, “How are you holding up?”</p><p>“I’m never doing that again,” Rue mumbled. Her voice felt gravely and her body felt heavy, too heavy, but she made her way into a sitting position and managed to bring her hands up – they felt like hot-air balloons, ones with anvils and anchors packed inside them. She tilted her head forward and pressed a kiss to Lexi’s lips. </p><p>There was a moment of clarity, a bolt from the blue.</p><p>“But that… I think I’ll do again. And again. And…” </p><p>Rue fell back into the couch, and she felt like she was flying all over again.</p>
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